NHN's Race for Tenants' Rights

Dear Neighbors,

On July 20th, NHN Tenant Organizers Dagan Bayliss, Nico Udu-gama, and Taylor Graham will participate as a relay team in the 8th Annual Nautica NYC Triathlon in an effort to raise money and awareness for New York City tenants' rights. We are calling it The Race for Tenants' Rights. Check out our website at www.nhnhome.org/tri. It is the first website John has ever created!

Why? Here are just a few reasons:

* Since 1993, New York City has lost about 168,000 affordable rent regulated units due in large part to vacancy decontrol and coop/condo conversions - 16% of the regulated housing stock. As Brooklyn continues to gentrify... where will low and moderate income people afford to live?
* New York City's Rent Guidelines Board, responsible for regulating the rent in NYC's one million rent-stabilized apartments, recently approved the highest rent increases in years. In addition to authorizing increases of 4.5% on one-year leases (and 8.5% on two-year leases), they also approved a supplemental rent increase (an extra $45 monthly for one-year leases and $85 monthly for two-year leases) affecting tenants who have lived in their apartments for over six years. As our national economy is facing a recession, rising costs of living and inflation, we are also raising the rent on our low-income renters, who are least likely to have savings to draw from.
* On top of legally raising rents, many landlords resort to less scrupulous measures as they seek to augment their profit margins. In addition to harassing and intimidating families,and engaging in blatantly frivolous lawsuits, some landlords will just refuse to make repairs - all as part of a calculated effort to remove low-income tenants from their buildings. Not all landlords are bad. Unfortunately, many take advantage of low-income tenants' ignorance of their tenants' rights or lack of access to legal representation.

NHN's Tenant team works every day to support Brooklyn tenants, educating them on their legal rights, attending court dates, advocating on their behalf to landlords, and working to ensure repairs are made (and much more).
We have created a simple website, which we hope you will check out: http://www.nhnhome.org/tri. There is information on the site about the race, our team, and how you can participate and support our brave competitors, Nico, Taylor and Dagan.